It was early fall 66 years ago when then-10-year-old Lily Nakai Havey, her brother and their parents were unceremoniously uprooted from their Los Angeles home and transported to a "war relocation camp" called Amache in southeast Colorado near a town called Granada. It would be their new home until the end of World War II.

Before arriving at Amache, Havey said her family was sent to a temporary facility in Santa Anita, Calif., for six months in March of 1942.

"They were so eager to get us out," she said.

Only a child at the time, Havey said her memories today of the experience remain painful and that's why in the mid-1980s she took up watercolor painting as an outlet to express her feelings.

Ever a creative person, Havey settled with her family in Salt Lake City after the war and later earned a bachelor's degree in music from the New England Conservatory of Music and a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Utah. For a time, she taught English in public schools and in the 1960s started her own stained glass window business.

"When talking about the experience, it's hard to put it into words," she said. "The watercolors are my memories and maybe some actual fantasies with that since I don't have a sharp memory of what happened. ... I remember how cold it was, the dust storms, I remember the crowded school rooms. ... It's in the paintings."

Just days after the events of Sept. 11, Havey teamed up with Lori Stevens, an Orem Public Library division manager who at the time worked at Utah Valley State College, and together they planned one of the first public exhibits of her art.

"It was a real eye-opener for a lot of people because it was immediately after sporadic episodes of hate crimes" in a backlash against Arab Americans, Stevens said.

Viewers are able to get a sense of Havey's impressions of her family's captivity through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, she said.

"The incredible thing about the paintings is that it really drives home the impact of war on children," Stevens said. "Children are like the silent victims ... They don't have a voice."

The art isn't childish, but child-like, she said.

"It's really striking. You get all the confused emotions, the fear of the future, not feeling secure, and her missing oranges, the ocean and ice cream," Stevens said.

Beginning on Tuesday and running through June 27, Havey's series of 23 watercolor works that chronicle her memories of the Amache internment camp will be on display at the Orem Public Library courtesy of the library and Center for Documentary Arts. Each painting deals with one specific aspect of her life in the camp. Among the paintings are "Towers of Arcadia," "The Light Searching," "Only My Freedom" and "Phoenix Rising."

On June 16, Havey will give a lecture about the exhibit and her experience at 7 p.m. in the library's Storytelling Wing.

Because of her young age, Havey said her impressions of being a Japanese American evacuee at Amache are much different from other adults and even other children who were there with her.

"Some people came out very bitter ... ," she said. "At my age, I wasn't aware of all the political ramifications. It was another kind of big adventure, another step."